A Tolkien nerd’s thoughts on The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

The first Hobbit film is true to the books, but has more flaws than virtues.

Before going forward, an important spoiler warning: this article assumes that you've seen An Unexpected Journey and have read The Hobbit, and takes no pains to avoid spoilers for either. As such, it will spoil not just the movie and the book, but probably also many elements of the next two Hobbit films. If you haven't read the books and want to be surprised by the next two movies, do not pass beyond this point.

I first read J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit when I was no more than eight or nine years old. The Lord of the Rings trilogy followed when I wasn't much older than that. I continue to make a point of reading through all of the books (and their appendices, at least the ones that aren't concerned with Elvish grammar) at least once every couple of years or so—even making it through The Silmarillion two or three times. I haven't read every posthumously published scrap about Middle Earth that Tolkien's son has seen fit to compile and publish, but my credibility as a Tolkien nerd should go unquestioned.

Apple Editor Jacqui Cheng, Social Editor Cesar Torres, Lead Developer Lee Aylward, and I will all be discussing An Unexpected Journey, the first of Peter Jackson's long-awaited Hobbit film adaptations, on Friday's upcoming episode of the Ars Technicast. In the meantime, I wanted to really examine the film as it relates to The Hobbit and also to Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, then distill the many mixed reactions I had during and after the movie into something a bit more coherent. As a fan of both, I've been awaiting An Unexpected Journey with some excitement, but more apprehension: on the one hand, it's a chance to revisit Jackson's lovingly rendered film version of Middle Earth. On the other, a much-criticized decision to make The Hobbit into three movies has only exacerbated fears that it would be a cash grab lacking in the care and craft that went into either the books or the first film trilogy. I ultimately came away disappointed in the movie, but not in the way I thought I would be.

Cut from the same cloth

An Unexpected Journey better integrates the events of The Hobbit with those of The Lord of the Rings.

The Hobbit was first published in 1937: 17 years before the publication of The Lord of the Rings in 1954 and 1955, before much of the world-building that Tolkien did for those books and the posthumously published The Silmarillion had been thought out. Despite numerous (and sometimes quite substantial) edits for the book's second and third editions, this means The Hobbit at times feels a bit disconnected from the rest of the Middle Earth legendarium. There are hints of things wider and deeper sprinkled throughout the book as it exists today—there's a mention of Moria, and the Necromancer who factors into some of the book's subplots is in fact Sauron himself. However, where the events of The Lord of the Rings are often tied directly to people, places, and things from bygone Ages, the world of The Hobbit is significantly smaller.

One of An Unexpected Journey's strengths, then, is that it better integrates The Hobbit with the rest of the canon. Locations like Rivendell, identical to its Lord of the Rings counterpart, and the presence of characters not even named in the book(Saruman and Galadriel, among others, with Orlando Bloom set to return as Legolas in at least one of the next two films) make the stories feel more like they're pieces of the same whole.

The tone of the movie is also a step forward in this regard. The events of The Hobbit occur on a much smaller scale than in LOTR—the fate of the world hangs in the balance in the latter and it's hard to have higher stakes than that. The movie versions of The Hobbit's events are rendered with an epicness consistent with the LOTR movies. The integration and fleshing out of narrative threads that either appear elsewhere in Tolkien's work or are only summarized in The Hobbit itself—the war of the dwarves in Moria, the threat of the Necromancer—make the story feel more significant. There are some parts of The Hobbit that aren't really built to support all of this added weight, but we'll get into that more in a bit.

Characters who would go on to appear again in LOTR are also lighter in the earlier book—The Hobbit's Gandalf is more flighty than his LOTR counterpart, and LOTR's ever-somber Elves are merry to the point of silliness in The Hobbit. The movie version again smooths out these inconsistencies, bringing the Hobbit characters who appear in both books more in line with their LOTR renderings.

A sense of place

Enlarge/ Hobbiton, which was built in New Zealand for The Lord of the Rings films and still stands as a tourist attraction today, is but one of Jackson's beautifully rendered Middle Earth locales.

Another strength of An Unexpected Journey— and Jackson's Tolkien adaptations in general—is its rendering of Middle Earth's locations. The movies take locations like Erebor (which by Tolkien's descriptions seems like little more than a few dark, cavernous hallways and the treasure room inhabited by Smaug) and make them into huge, beautiful set pieces that look worthy of the significance placed upon them by the narrative. They look lived-in, and in almost every case they're superior to the mental images that I've formed over the years that I've been reading these books.

Doing right by Tolkien

Any movie that says it's going to stretch The Hobbit out into three films is going to need to take some liberties with the source material, mostly in the form of additions. Some of the changes made to the narrative in Jackson's LOTR movies broke with Tolkien's versions of events in a way that weakened the story. An UnexpectedJourney happily avoids these pitfalls, even when it's filling in the blanks by inserting its own material or fleshing out events which were merely implied in the books.

Most of the changes made to the book's narrative are driven by a need to transform that book (which relies on an omniscient narrator and, often, the unseen internal thought processes of its characters) into a film. Both the book and the film are about not just Bilbo's physical there-and-back-again journey between The Shire and the Lonely Mountain, but also Bilbo's mental journey from timid, too-comfortable hobbit to a minor hero in his own right.

Enlarge/ Bilbo's transformation from stay-at-home hobbit to unlikely hero is by necessity more rapid and more overt in the film.

Warner Bros.

In the book, a large part of Bilbo's transformation is shown through internal monologue and his first overtly heroic deed comes rather late in the game, when he saves the dwarves from giant spiders in Mirkwood and then later helps them escape imprisonment by the elves who live in the forest (material that, based on the pacing of this first movie, will probably crop up in the second of the three Hobbit films).

Because this film is split three ways (and because showing a character thinking to themselves is, at best, dull cinema), An Unexpected Journey needs to make this mental transformation happen both more quickly and more obviously. To make it more obvious that the Bilbo at the beginning of the story is entrenched in his own too-comfortable rut, there's a scene where Gandalf tells him so. To kickstart his transformation from timid to heroic, it is Bilbo (rather than Gandalf) who thinks to stall the trolls until they're turned to stone by the rising sun. And to really drive home his character's growth, by the end of the film Bilbo is standing up against wolves and orcs all by his lonesome to prove his worth to Thorin and company, and to himself. All of these are changes to the book's version of events, but none of them feel wildly inconsistent with Tolkien's narrative or with his characters.

Thorin's character has also been tweaked slightly for the film. His stubbornness and pride, qualities present in the book but only really emphasized near the end (and, coincidentally, in one of Tolkien's Unfinished Tales recalling the events of The Hobbit from Gandalf's perspective), is made explicit in several scenes. The film's Thorin also has a particular dislike for elves, where the book's Thorin has no particular distaste or love for them (save after being captured and held in Mirkwood by Thranduil and the wood-elves, but even then his beef is with them specifically and not the race as a whole). These character tweaks didn't make too much of a difference in this first movie but will pay dividends later when he's captured by Thranduil (probably in the second movie) and when he's negotiating with the men and elves for shares of Smaug's treasure after the dragon's defeat (probably in the third film).

Enlarge/ The film's Thorin Oakenshield differs from the one depicted in the book, but the changes are consistent with his characterization in some of Tolkien's more obscure writings.

The last big change to The Hobbit's core narrative is Azog, an orc fought by Thorin at Moria who serves as Bilbo and the dwarves' primary antagonist this outing. Azog is indeed a character from the books—the battle outside Moria is depicted in one of the LOTR appendices and Azog is mentioned briefly in The Hobbit, though in the books another dwarf kills him during that battle and he has no particular dislike of Thorin.

This is another change that was necessitated to some degree by the source material, though I'm not sure how it will play out in the end. The vast majority of The Hobbit is presented in concise, cut-up chapters, and while Smaug is the de facto villain, he's not an immediate threat to the heroes until toward the end of the story (and he's dispatched after only a handful of chapters). The Necromancer is likewise a threat on a larger scale, but he has little impact on Bilbo and the dwarves. A more immediate antagonist is necessary to drive the action, and Azog fills that role well enough (though as villains go he's about as one-dimensional as they get).

It was a great idea to flesh out things that were not fully detailed in the book(s), but we got a badly flawed implementation of that idea. What we ended up with was George Lucas Star Wars Special Editions. Changes for the sake of making changes rather than when it would help the story. Adding battle scenes that didn't exist in the books serves no purpose but to point out to people what a great battle scene you just made. Yet it'll continue in the next two movies because it'll make tons of money.

One thing I don't see anyone else talking about, which shocks me, is the laughably bad CGI during many scenes.

Oh, I have an idea. Since all of you bloggers and critics know that all of the rest of us are going to see the movie anyway, why don't you just skip the bashing and let us watch it? It's not like you're telling us anything we won't see for ourselves.

PS: No, I didn't read the article. I skipped straight to the comments.

It was a great idea to flesh out things that were not fully detailed in the book(s), but we got a badly flawed implementation of that idea. What we ended up with was George Lucas Star Wars Special Editions. Changes for the sake of making changes rather than when it would help the story. Adding battle scenes that didn't exist in the books serves no purpose but to point out to people what a great battle scene you just made. Yet it'll continue in the next two movies because it'll make tons of money.

One thing I don't see anyone else talking about, which shocks me, is the laughably bad CGI during many scenes.

I don't know if I would describe the LotR trilogy as nimble. I caught a bit of Two Towers on TV last year. I thought it was great in the cinema, but I could barely stand the few minutes of Elrond telling his daughter the dangers of falling for a mortal. And Viggo Mortensen was a good actor and fitted the persona of Strider, but I'm not sure if he fitted the persona of the returned king. Anyway, after the tedium of the visions of Rivendell I didn't have any particular desire to ever watch the films a second time. The portrayal of Helm's Deep covered a multitude of sins.

I ultimately suspect that, even with all of the added and expanded elements, Jackson had the material for perhaps two to two-and-a-half films and decided it would be easier to expand the series to three movies instead of murdering some of his darlings and cutting back. The decision was also probably driven by the studio, which stands to make roughly ten hojillion dollars from each Hobbit film released whether there's one movie or eight movies. It's safe to say that they exerted no pressure on Jackson to be more judicious in his editing, and that's a shame because this movie needs an editor like Gandalf needs pipe-weed.

I suspect this entire article could be summarized like this - not that I mind the article, as it's well-written and well-thought out, but this is just cut-to-the-bones truth about these films, I suspect.

Edit: One can always hope for a <somebodys>-cut version someday making it a bit slimmer and fit.

I found the battle and actions scenes to be laughably over the top, more Indiana Jones than Tolkein. Some of the "comedy" and dialogue as well, though I had the same complaint with the Lord of the Rings movies. Stuff that just didn't fit with the tenor of the books.

I was disappointed when Guillermo del Toro left the project, I think he'd have shown more restraint.

Still, I don't regret the 10 dollars I spent, though the lost opportunity for a better adaptation is a bit sad.

My main issue with the film is that it sacrifices the novel for the sake of LOTR: The Hobbit is much closer to a fairy tale than to a fantasy, the characters from LOTR are pushed onto the audience only because of the films, and there's also the issue of the style. The reader doesn't know anything about the world, he learns everything together with Bilbo - who is the closest to a "decent average human" ideal - and not only has that changed in the film (because, of course, everyone is now expert because of LOTR) in general, but the added scenes are really hurting the structure of the story.

The biggest problem (not mentioned here) was it being 48fps. It made the movie look far cheaper and hokier than it should have. 24fps has been and will remain the cinematic standard because of its visual qualities. anything above that looks like a damn handicam or afternoon soap opera.

I saw it in 2D 24fps because I'm a cranky old man trapped in a 27-year-old's body.

I write this as a comment on the film industry, but obviously it applies to the Hobbit: Films need to be special to be more than 2 hours long. Serenity is special. It's my favourite film and I think it's just the right length at approximately 2 hours. Heat is special, but at 3 hours long, I don't know how many times I'll watch it again. The Hobbit is supposed to be a kids' film! (with appeal for adults, obviously) Films aimed at children shouldn't be any more than 90 minutes.

I don't know if I would describe the LotR trilogy as nimble. I caught a bit of Two Towers on TV last year. I thought it was great in the cinema, but I could barely stand the few minutes of Elrond telling his daughter the dangers of falling for a mortal. And Viggo Mortensen was a good actor and fitted the persona of Strider, but I'm not sure if he fitted the persona of the returned king. Anyway, after the tedium of the visions of Rivendell I didn't have any particular desire to ever watch the films a second time. The portrayal of Helm's Deep covered a multitude of sins.

He described the LotR trilogy as nimbler, not nimble. This doesn't bode well for the Hobbit trilogy which I haven't yet seen (it opens in Australia on December 26), as I would describe the LotR film trilogy as anything but.

The biggest problem (not mentioned here) was it being 48fps. It made the movie look far cheaper and hokier than it should have. 24fps has been and will remain the cinematic standard because of its visual qualities. anything above that looks like a damn handicam or afternoon soap opera.

I was prepared to dislike it in the higher framerate but after a few minutes it just seemed normal. The artificial association between low framerate and quality can't be put to rest too soon as far as I'm concerned. The action and scenery looked incredibly lifelike and lacked the judder that tends to give me headaches in so many movies. With the addition of 3d it was like looking into a real place instead of an approximation.

The only downside to me was the way it showed off flaws as well. The goblin king with the CG jowls looked ridiculous and I just wanted to see Glamdring slice off his floppy neck. Whereas Gollum looked like a real creature, that guy looked like a video game.

I think a higher framerate is like HDTV...it shows the successes and flaws with less limiting blur to hide shortcomings.

Edit: also, Radagast ended up being all of the things that made people OK with the lack of Bombadil in Jackson's Fellowship. Flaky old wizard who eats too many mushrooms and acts as an almost slapstick act...I could have done without this. I always felt the "real" Radagast would be a bit more respectable even if Saruman dismissed his value.

The funny thing is, the reason I wanted to see LOTR, and I mean THE reason, was to see the Balrog. Everything else was secondary. But I remember being disappointed that so much was missed in FotR, especially Book I.

Now I see that the Hobbit, which is a much lighter, single book is being given three movies, and I have to ask myself "What the hell is PJ thinking"?

People need to keep in mind that the LOTR's films are already a decade old. There are ten year olds out there that have never seen them. They will line up to see this film, the next two, and then transition right onto the LOTR films. This story will introduce an entire new generation to the older series.

While I agree in the main with this review, I felt the mangling of Bilbo's story arc was out of place. For starters, it leaves him nowhere to go as a character.

I, also, had my ability to suspend disbelief strained at the umpteenth impossible fall and the Three Stooges like fighting was annoying instead of funny. The comic relief was often poorly timed. The massive continuity errors were jarring and after spending 15 minutes on Radaghast he disappears out of the film without even a parting 1.5 second shot of them running away.

Where the LOTR took a somber story and added some comic relief to break the slog, The Hobbit is already funny so they tried to add the sturm and drang. That, ultimately, was the problem, IMO. The screenwriting was just poor.

That said, I enjoyed the visualizations of the goblins and I felt the way the Pack-O-Dwarves-With-Almost-The-Same-Names was handled was really quite good.

Surprised you didn't mention the cinematography. I'm not really sure what the problem was. The 48fps didn't bother me, in fact, since it was 3D, I saw far less artifacting and ghosting and the usual weirdness. But - it may have been the glasses - everything looked washed out, de-saturated, and brownish orange. I assume this was an attempt at going for a warm glow, but I don't think the lighting they were using works with the technology they employed (hence the soap-opera look I think). A lot of the props and staging looked just like that (though to be fair you sometimes saw the same thing in the original movie). I think the stagecraft hasn't stayed up with the technology and the folks from props, sets, lighting, etc. are going to have their work cut out for them the next decade or so.

I found it incredibly ironic that the CGI characters, particularly Gollum and the orc king looked better than their human (dwarf/hobbit) counterparts.

I'm intrigued by the 48fps tech. 24fps (or even 25 in the UK) gives me mild motion sickness because the frame rate is far too low and directors who have come from the TV industry don't know how to shoot action sequences for the lower frame rate.

The only technical argument for 24fps is that the longer exposure time gives each frame more light to form an image (though with the amount of post-processing now, that's probably moot). Part of the movie look is to do with the fact that because you can't do fast moving things or quick tracks/pans, the director is forced to move things at a more thoughtful pace than TV.

And don't knock handicams! Most of the modern ones can do stuff film-makers of even a few years back could only dream about.

I was also, having been amazed by Pan's Labyrinth. But I wasn't disappointed when Jackson took it back.

What really fills me with foreboding is the waiting... for the second and third films, for the "limited" disc release, then for the "even more limited" release, then the "director's release". Lots of people are going to make lots of money from this.

I saw The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey tonight and after reading this review I have to say I agree pretty much with all of it. Its a different pace and flow to LOTR and you can tell that its padded out rather than stripped down, but I definitely enjoyed the film, that goes without saying. It did come across slightly disjointed at times but the excellent visuals, gigantic epic cinematography and the great film music score took the edge off. For all the Tolkien and LOTR lovers out there this film is a joy to watch and gives every one what they want, more middle earth on the big screen.

This movie continues the trend of what I call "Hollywoodization" of films, where everything needs to be bigger bigger bigger or faster faster faster. My issue with this film is it's utter lack of restraint when it comes to this. Watching a wizard dodge orcs at warp 2 in a sled pulled by giant rabbits, I could hear someone in a board meeting saying "This film needs a car chase!!". My response is, why don't we just take this movement to it's logical conclusion, mount a giant laser beam to the head of the dragon, and have Gandalf fly it to the centre of Sauron's new Death Star.

Edit: One can always hope for a <somebodys>-cut version someday making it a bit slimmer and fit.

Actually, I'm hoping that after the 3rd is released someone will do a "Just the Hobbit Ma'm" at about 1.5 to 2 hrs and a "Rise of Sauron" at 4-5 hours long. Perhaps borrowing some bits from the LOTR when needed to setup a transition to it.

I'm not really sure how long the movie has been out, but I skipped the article because of the spoiler warning. It's fair to assume that people have read the book or at least are familiar with the story and so it's no spoiler that the ring is The ring, and so on, but my whole reason for clicking on the headline was to evaluate whether the movie is worth seeing.

When you say it was a "not wholly unexpected disappointment," my reaction to your review goes from worried to skeptical. In general, approaching something with negative expectations means that what you get out of it may, in fact, be a negative experience. That has, at least, been my experience with films I didn't expect to like the first time around.

I saw it in 48 FPS 3D and absolutely loved it. I thought Martin Freeman's portrayal of Bilbo was beautifully loyal to the character from the books, and I loved the way the dwarves really seemed to be looking for a home (the fireplace song scene was especially well done, I thought.)

Most of the reviewer's complaints seem to stem from faults in the book's narrative itself, or extensions of the story to fit into the larger narrative of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien's work tended to fluctuate in pacing quite a lot and, if anything, the movie strays too close to his vision to avoid the same.

Peter Jackson is the single most faithful interpreter of the series we're likely to see for years. I was awestruck by the Middle Earth shown in the Hobbit. Maybe you'd enjoy it more if you hadn't insisted on watching something in the lower format presented when you expected not to like it anyway.

Being an old shit, the Hobbit wasn't a very good book to be honest when it came out. From a literary stand point it was... mediocre as a novel. If the film ends up mediocre then by all means it captured the book perfectly. So far, I like the film a lot better then the book. I can't say the same for LOTR... but hey, nothing can be perfect.

When do we get a movie about Turin Turambar? I won't let the kids see that one though...

The Silmarillion probably has a good half dozen movies in it. Hurin+Turin would be one (maybe two), Tuor another. You could make a solid two movies following Fëanor and his children.

There'd be a lot of material drawn from the Histories books to pad out the sketchy parts of The Silmarillion (that is, everything between the covers), but it's not hard to see how it could all hang together.

Sadly, I can't see it happening any time soon, but there's always the hope.

I pretty much agree with everything here, except it's been a long time since I read the books, and I actually thought they deviated more from the source material than it appears they did.

I saw it in the 3D / 48 FPS, and technically it was marvellous - the extra framerate made for the smoothest, least annoying 3D I've seen, and it was all very smooth. In my theatre it seemed quite clear and bright too.

But I'm definitely programmed that 24 FPS is more "cinematic" and I think that this presentation did a diservice for me - the look plus the lighter feel felt more like I was watching a Sunday afternoon special.

Technically it was probably the right choice to go to that higher framerate for 3D, but psychologically I felt like it prevented me from getting into it the way I might have.

The biggest problem (not mentioned here) was it being 48fps. It made the movie look far cheaper and hokier than it should have. 24fps has been and will remain the cinematic standard because of its visual qualities. anything above that looks like a damn handicam or afternoon soap opera.

HFR absolutely murdered this movie. Some people claim you get used to the effect after a few scenes; it's not true. In reality, HFR vastly improves certain scenes (those with quickly swooping cameras, those with a lot of fast action, and those where the actors are moving in slow motion), while thoroughly destroying other scenes (especially those with a stationary camera, where characters are moving about normally).

Watching The Hobbit on IMAX (extremely high resolution), in passive 3D (very immersive), and at 48 FPS, the effect is like "you're really there". Although I'm sure filmmakers 100 years ago would have jumped at the ability to make you feel like "you're really there", in actuality it feels a lot more like a behind-the-scenes video and not at all like a movie. Too much advancement in technology removes the mystery from the cinema and ruins the experience.

I believe HFR could be used to good effect by an extremely careful filmmaker, cinematographer, and editor. This is not that film.

It's sad that I can watch the movie one time and immediately know how he could have re-shot and re-edited the movie to mostly fix the HFR problems. Yet somehow despite all his tests, he seems oblivious to the issues.

I really believe HFR can be used correctly. My hope is that Cameron will get it right with Avatar 2. If not, HFR will doom that movie just as surely as it doomed this one.

Thanks for the review! When I heard that Jackson was making The Hobbit I was excited. When I heard it was going to be 3 films, I was sad. The Hobbit was the perfect story for a movie. Stretching it to 2 maybe, but 3? No way.

It's funny, LOTR could have and should have been more (yes, even more than the extended editions), but the Hobbit would have fit nicely in a 2-3 hour movie.

I haven't seen it yet and likely won't until it's out on Blu-ray. I can't stand going to movie theaters any more and have instead added a home theater (120" front projection, 7.1 sound, popcorn machine) in the basement that is much more enjoyable for my family, friends, and of course me.

I am interested to hear about the 48 fps viewings. I'm hearing mixed reviews on that and from my limited experience with higher frame rates I don't think I'd like it. The projector supports more, but I normally keep it at 24 fps. Could be that I'm just not used to it. Grumpy old man (at 40 years old).

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.